A new poll reported in an unlikely source shows a broad majority of Tea Party members and roughly half of all Republicans support impeaching Barack Obama. More than 1,000 registered voters were asked, “Would you support or oppose the impeachment of President Obama?” Among those who describe themselves as Tea Party members, a full 60 percent support impeachment. An additional 16 percent are unsure.

Among Republicans, 48 percent support impeachment and 22 percent are unsure.

A sitting Congressman has endorsed the call to impeach President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. Rep. Trent Franks, R-AZ, told Scott Keyes of ThinkProgress.org he would “absolutely” support impeachment if enough fellow Congressmen would support him. The left-wing blog posted an interview it filmed of the four-term Congressman at the Tea Party Patriots Policy Summit in Phoenix, in which Franks called for holding Obama and Holder accountable for violating the rule of law. Keyes asked if Franks would consider defunding the Department of Justice over its refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Franks called withholding funds from the department “probably the strongest leverage that we have.”

The left-wing blogger then returned to DOMA and raised the subject of impeachment:

Keyes: I know Newt Gingrich has came out [sic.] and said if they don’t reverse course here, we ought to be talking about possibly impeaching either Attorney General Holder or even President Obama to try to get them to reverse course. Do you think that is something you would support?

Frank: If it could gain the collective support, absolutely. I called for Eric Holder to repudiate the policy to try terrorists within our civil courts, or resign. So it just seems like that they have an uncanny ability to get it wrong on almost all fronts.

Franks is the first sitting Congressman to raise the specter of impeachment while in office. However, while successfully campaigning to regain his old House seat last fall, Michigan Republican Tim Walberg said the GOP must be willing to confront Obama “up to and including impeachment.”

The name “Murkowski” is somewhat exotic in the lower 48, but in Alaska it is the political equivalent of Smith, Jones, or Johnson. The state has been ruled by a Murkowski for 30years. Frank Murkowski first ran for U.S. Senate in 1970, but was elected in his second run ten years later. He held that seat until 2002, when he became governor and appointed his daughter, Lisa Murkowski, to his vacant seat to continue the royal dynasty. The arrogance and corruption of his brief reign as governor branded two names into the Alaskan mind: Murkowski and Sarah Palin, the governor who cleaned things up.

Now, Lisa Murkowski is arguing that the people of Alaska are too stupid to spell her last name, so the state’s voting law should be invalidated to cater to the lowest common denominator.

As I noted recently, the Alaskan election law (Alaskan statute 15.15.360.) could not clearer. It states a vote “shall be counted if the oval is filled in for that candidate and if the name, as it appears on the write-in declaration of candidacy, of the candidate or the last name of the candidate is written in the space provided.” (Emphasis added.) Moreover, there are “no exceptions” to this.

Knowing this, Murkowski focused many of her campaign advertisements on teaching Alaskan voters how to properly cast a ballot – including spelling her name correctly. The Huffington Postreported Murkowski “closed many of her rallying speeches by leading the crowds in spelling her last name – “MUR-KOW-SKI” – and handed out rubbery wristbands featuring a filled in oval and her name that voters were allowed to bring, discreetly, into the polling booth with them.” (Discreently. No doubt.) The campaign also took to the airwaves. One ad was simply dubbed “Spelling Bee”:

Eleven years ago, like every citizen elected to serve in Congress or any person appointed to any federal position, I swore an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

I’ve always thought it significant that the Founders included domestic enemies in that oath of office. They thought liberty was as much at risk from threats within our borders as from outside, and French political thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville agreed with that warning.

In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the greatest threat to our nation was clear – and foreign. While Islamic terrorism still represents the greatest external threat to America and American lives, the avowed program of the Obama regime has changed the picture in a fundamental way.

For the first time in American history, we have a man in the White House who